Let's review a few things media is telling us during this Trump 100 days regarding immigration:

He is stopping H-1 green card and high-skilled foreign worker visas even as Republican think tanks wrote these immigration policies and every Republican in Congress voted for and supports this---all while media tells us Trump is helping immigrants and the poor.

TRUMP CAMPAIGNED ON EXPANDING H-1 HIGH-SKILLED FOREIGN WORKER POLICY SO WE KNOW THIS IS NOT TRUE.

He has let all nations having signed Trans Pacific Trade Pact know he is taking US from these trade agreements when we know he has throughout these few decades been helping to write TPP policy and campaigned as FAST-TRACKING TPP so we know that is not true---while media tells us how good Trump is for immigrants and the poor.

He moves forward in intervention in Syria after several years of civil war to end the war and media calls him a traitor to US interests. We have watched for several decades these same Foreign Economic Zone tactics in Asia and Latin America where nations are deliberately brought to instability and war moving large population groups to refugee status then making those refugees global labor pool. Global Wall Street then pretends to be helping these citizens by sending in World Bank/IMF and building Foreign Economic Zones---enslaving citizens in those nations while a brutal dictator is made a billionaire. This is NOT THE IMMIGRATION POLICY LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRATS WANT.

THAT IS WHAT GABBARD AND TRUMP ARE DOING IN SYRIA.

He is restricting air travel for immigrants with various legal and undocumented travel. We shouted to our immigrant citizens that Obama and Clinton neo-liberals were not helping them with driver's licenses------with sanctuary ----they were simply creating density for Foreign Economic Zones in US across all industries. We knew it would be temporary. Watch as a Trump Administration does not ENFORCE ANY OF THESE RESTRICTIVE LAWS.

THE GOAL IS MAKING THE FAR-RIGHT LOOK FRIENDLY TO IMMIGRANTS AND THE POOR

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trailBusinessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the party’s convention in Cleveland.

For someone who has strong words about the current state of immigration, Donald Trump certainly has inconsistent ideas about what to do about it. Immigration has been the Republican front-runner’s signature issue since he entered the race. He has stuck to his early idea of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but has shifted several times about the H-1B program, which grants temporary visas to non-immigrant workers. We took a look at his major public statements about his view on the H-1B program, and unpacked his flip-floppery.

“The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans — including immigrants themselves and their children — to earn a middle class wage. … We need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office not USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services].”

Trump released his immigration proposal early in his campaign, arguing that foreign workers are holding down American salaries and hurting employment rates. Trump proposed restricting the program, and criticized it for giving away coveted entry-level IT jobs to workers flown in cheaper from overseas.He proposed increasing the prevailing wage for H-1B visas and adding a recruitment requirement to find American workers before hiring foreign ones. Raising the prevailing wage for H-1B workers will force companies to give entry-level jobs to U.S. workers instead of flying in cheaper labor, according to the proposal. This would help diversity in Silicon Valley, the proposal says, so that black, Hispanic and female workers will be hired from the existing pool.Trump correctly noted there is no requirement for employers to recruit American workers first, and called for this to be required. These proposed changes are consistent with proposals from those who believe the H-1B program is being widely abused to the detriment of American workers.

Moderator Becky Quick: “You have been very critical of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook who has wanted to increase the number of these H-1Bs.”

Trump: “I was not at all critical of him. I was not at all. In fact, frankly, he’s complaining about the fact that we’re losing some of the most talented people. They go to Harvard. They go to Yale. They go to Princeton. They come from another country, and they’re immediately sent out. I am all in favor of keeping these talented people here so they can go to work in Silicon Valley.”Quick: “Are you in favor of H-1Bs or are you opposed to them?” Trump: “I’m in favor of people coming into this country legally. And you know what? They can have it any way you want. You can call it visas, you can call it work permits, you can call it anything you want. … As far as the visas are concerned, if we need people, it’s fine. They have to come into this country legally. We have a country of borders. We have a country of laws. We have to obey the laws. It’s fine if they come in, but they have to come in legally.”

— exchange during the Republican debate on CNBC, Oct. 28The first time Trump was asked about the H-1B program during a debate was in October. Trump took a more moderate stance than his policy proposal, even supporting the visas for bringing in talent from out of the country. He made no mention of his plan to wipe out abuse, though he said the program must follow the laws.

Further, Trump denied he was critical of Zuckerberg, of Facebook. Maybe he forgot, or was unaware of, the information in his policy proposal and its criticism of Silicon Valley executives using H-1B to hire foreign workers, saying his proposals “will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program.”

Moderator Megyn Kelly: “Mr. Trump, your campaign website to this day argues that more visas for highly skilled workers would, quote, ‘decimate’ American workers. However, at the CNBC debate, you spoke enthusiastically in favor of these visas. So, which is it?”Trump: “I’m changing. I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country, and if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in. But, and we do need in Silicon Valley, we absolutely have to have. So, we do need highly skilled, and one of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges. They’ll go to Harvard, they’ll go to Stanford, they’ll go to Wharton, as soon as they’re finished they’ll get shoved out. They want to stay in this country. They want to stay here desperately, they’re not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.”— exchange during Republican debate on Fox News, March 3

Trump was confronted about the answer he gave during the CNBC debate in October, showing support for the H-1B program. He admitted that his stance is changing. When Kelly asked in a follow-up question whether he was abandoning the position on his website, Trump answered: “I’m changing it, and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country.”

Trump’s answer here was consistent with his answer during the CNBC debate. He said again that Silicon Valley needs highly skilled workers, and showed his support for the H-1B program. Further, he appeared to support employers sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards, saying, “We absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.”

“Megyn Kelly asked about highly-skilled immigration. The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.” — Trump statement, March 3

Trump reversed his claim after the debate ended. In a statement released on his campaign website, he said he does not actually support H-1Bs. Instead, he said he would “end forever” using H-1B workers for cheaper labor, and stuck to his initial proposal of a recruitment requirement for employers.

Is Trump suggesting he misunderstood the question, or that Kelly had asked about a different program? It’s clear she asked him about his stance on H-1B. And his answer is a repeat of his previous answers on H1B visas, suggesting he knew what he was talking about.H-1B visas are non-immigrant temporary work visas, as Trump says. Companies use it to temporarily hire a foreign national for specialty occupations, and can sponsor them for permanent residency. So it is sometimes viewed as a method of bringing in skilled immigrants. H-1Bs also are used for fashion models working temporarily in the United States.

Some H-1B workers are highly skilled, which can be determined by their degree and by their wages. The majority of H-1B workers are in computer-related occupations. The median salary H-1B recipients in fiscal 2014 was $75,000, and 55 percent of them had degrees higher than a bachelor’s. Nearly 72 percent of all workers who were granted continuing or initial employment with H-1B visas in fiscal 2014 were 25 to 34 years old.

“I know the H-1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me. I’m a businessman. These are laws. These are regulations. These are rules. We’re allowed to do it. … I will take advantage of it; they’re the laws. But I’m the one that knows how to change it. Nobody else on this dais knows how to change it like I do, believe me.” “I know the H-1B very well. And it’s something that I, frankly, use, and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it. We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it’s very important to say, well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do. When it’s sitting there waiting for you, but it’s very bad. It’s very bad for business in terms of — and it’s very bad for our workers and it’s unfair for our workers. And we should end it.”

— Trump, Republican debate on CNN, March 10 Perhaps these answers get us closer to the truth.Trump acknowledged that as an employer, he took advantage of the H-1B program to hire foreign workers. It is a lawful option, he added, but he “shouldn’t be allowed to use it.” Trump argued that because he uses the program, he knows how unfair it is for American workers — and that he wants to end the program.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He has used the H-1B program as an employer, and supports bringing talented, educated workers into the country. But he also wants to end the H-1B program because he believes it’s full of abuse. He proposes restricting the program so that the industry that most relies on it —– the tech industry — can’t use it to shut Americans out from jobs in Silicon Valley. Yet he says he supports Silicon Valley taking measures to retain talented and educated foreign workers.We don’t know exactly what to make of his stance — and it’s unclear if Trump even knows himself. However, what we unequivocally can say is that Trump deserves a handful of Upside-Down Pinocchios for his flip-floppery.____________________________________________Let's look at some of the other immigration policy points----defunding sanctuary cities which are simply US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----is simply recognizing the coming economic crash with the goal of handing US cities to WORLD BANK/IMF. Trump's defunding of these cities makes it easier to push them into BANKRUPTCY-----this is why all the CLINTON/OBAMA Wall Street neo-liberals as MAYOR OF THESE US CITIES are standing strong against this big, bad Trump. These mayors WANT to be defunded to assure these cities are pushed to bankruptcy and handed to WORLD BANK-----yes, Baltimore has extreme bond debt and misappropriation of all revenue coming to city coffers just to do this.

We shouted several years ago when Obama and Clinton neo-liberals were POSING SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE on immigration policy that Obama's Executive Order giving immigrants lots of freedoms would disappear. We also shouted that Trump was being installed to move further right wing and authoritarian regarding immigrants and how US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones treat them---the intend is to create the same environment for global labor pool in US cities as exist overseas.

WE KNEW ALL THIS BACK IN 2010-------IT IS PLANNED AND DELIBERATE AND WILL TAKE 99% OF US CITIZENS TOO.

What are his ten points?

1. Build the wall2. End “catch and release.”3. Create a deportation task force and focus on criminals in the country illegally4. Defund sanctuary cities5. Cancel President Obama’s executive actions6. Extreme vetting. Block immigration from some nations7. Force other countries to take back those whom the U.S. wants to deport8. Get biometric visa tracking system fully in place9. Strengthen E-Verify, block jobs for the undocumented10. Limit legal immigration, lower it to “historic norms,” and set new caps

PBS-----NPR -----AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA HAVE ALL KNOWN THIS----THEY DELIBERATELY KEPT WE THE PEOPLE UNINFORMED JUST AS PRIVATE MEDIA CORPORATIONS DID. 'Lisa Desjardins' as a reporter does not tell us all this-----before Clinton era our journalism and media would HOLD POWER ACCOUNTABLE with lots of broad discussion-----Clinton era brought right wing narrow propaganda to media keeping us uninformed because that is what right wing does.

Donald Trump delivers an immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday night. Photo by Carlo Allegri/REUTERSDonald Trump has expanded his words on immigration, moving from the three core principles he outlined just over one year ago (that policy paper remains the primary immigration document on his website) to a ten-point plan unveiled in his speech in Phoenix on Wednesday night.

What are his ten points?

1. Build the wall2. End “catch and release.”3. Create a deportation task force and focus on criminals in the country illegally4. Defund sanctuary cities5. Cancel President Obama’s executive actions6. Extreme vetting. Block immigration from some nations7. Force other countries to take back those whom the U.S. wants to deport8. Get biometric visa tracking system fully in place9. Strengthen E-Verify, block jobs for the undocumented10. Limit legal immigration, lower it to “historic norms,” and set new caps

Here is some context on each point:

1. Build the wall

Trump has continued to stress that Mexico would pay for the wall, despite Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s tweet on Wednesday insisting that he personally told Trump his nation would do no such thing. Going off script in Phoenix, Trump complimented Peña Nieto and then said, “They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall.”

2. End “catch and release”

Trump says any immigrant in the country illegally who is arrested by law enforcement would be detained until they are deported.

3. Create a deportation task force and focus on criminals in the country illegally.

Trump says he would launch a “deportation task force” that would focus on removing undocumented residents with criminal records, along with those who have overstayed their visas or are using public resources or benefits.

4. Defund “sanctuary cities”

Trump says he would use the federal government to discourage cities from enacting policies that protect or aid undocumented residents. Such places are referred to by conservatives as “sanctuary cities.”

5. Cancel President Obama’s executive actions

The GOP nominee would end the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy, better known as DACA, under which roughly half a million young people brought to the U.S. as children have received temporary legal status. Trump would also cancel President Obama’s DAPA program, or Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which would give similar status to undocumented parents of American citizens. That program has been frozen as it faces court challenges.

6. Extreme vetting. Block immigration from some nations

Trump would block immigration from countries for which proper vetting is not possible. He says that would include Syria and Libya currently.

7. Force other countries to take back those whom the U.S. wants to deport

Trump did not specify how this might work but insisted he would force other nations to take back criminals and other undocumented residents the U.S. wants to deport.

8. Get biometric visa tracking system fully in place

Such a system would include biometric records, such as fingerprints or retinal scans, that could identify individuals with more precision as they enter the country.

9. Strengthen E-Verify, block jobs for the undocumented

The nominee did not offer specifics but said he would strengthen the E-Verify system so that undocumented residents would find it difficult or impossible to get work.

10. Limit legal immigration, lower it to “historic norms” and set new caps

In the past, Trump has indicated that some legal immigration should be curtailed (in August 2015 he proposed a temporary freeze on all green cards). But his Phoenix speech expanded on that idea. The Republican nominee is now calling for a commission to roll back the amount of legal immigration to “historic norms,” a phrase that implies a level that is lower than the current historic high (immigrants relative to total U.S. population). Trump said he would expect new immigration caps to be put in place.

_____________________________________

Trump is MOVING FORWARD SMART CITY technology being built in all Foreign Economic Zones moving to become those INDEPENDENT CITY STATES. He is using IMMIGRANTS as a reason to do so just as OBAMA used TERRORISTS to expand HOMELAND SECURITY in all our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones. See the progression-------each time WE THE PEOPLE are made to feel these policies are to protect us--------here Trump is protecting those right wing citizens------Obama was protecting city communities----when the goal of totalitarian securitization is very, very, very, very bad for the global 99%.

8. Get biometric visa tracking system fully in place9. Strengthen E-Verify, block jobs for the undocumented

This article shows to what goal Trump has in these tracking systems----they are doing it in FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas where extreme wealth and extreme poverty has hold after these decades of global neo-liberalism. Yes, it will be totalitarian---NO it is not being built to help global citizens have sustainable cities-----Trump is simply using again our immigrants as a reason to need to track-----

'Ravindran notes that “To make sure that no one trespasses on its immaculate privatopia, Palava plans to issue its residents with ‘smart identity cards’, and will watch over them through a system of ‘smart surveillance’.”

It's all about a JUST AND WELL-ORDERED society------isn't that what all far-right wing authoritarian fascist movements want? It's all about a JUST AND WELL-ORDERED society------isn't that what all far-right wing authoritarian fascist movements want?

This is what Trump was installed to MOVE FORWARD-----he is now making US cities feel AGAIN that outside threat of terrorists et al in order to take every freedom, liberty, and justice ideal we have in America.

Who doesn’t love a good dystopian thriller? With unforgettable characters and edge-of-your-seat chase scenes, these movies are entertaining, exciting, and extremely lucrative. From Blade Runner and The Matrix trilogy to Elysium and the Hunger Games series, these movies have defined our conception of a post-apocalyptic world. But the real power of this genre lies not in its special effects but in its creative baring of social tensions in futuristic megacities that today no longer look so far-fetched.

From lack of infrastructure to concentrated poverty, megacities—urban areas of 10 million or more people—present significant challenges for any local government. Concerns over social inequality have also long been a fixture of the discourse around megacities, especially so in India where there are six such metropolitan areas amid a culture defined by the hierarchies of the caste system. At the moment, however, the issue of urban exclusion in India is now coalescing around that nation’s burgeoning smart city movement.

Smart cities, according to the Indian government’s website, “are those cities which have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional, and economic infrastructure while ensuring centrality of citizens in a sustainable environment. It is expected that such a Smart City will generate options for all residents to pursue their livelihoods and interests meaningfully and with joy.” The impetus for India’s smart city building is largely urbanization demographics. Currently, 31 precent of India’s population is urban. That is projected to increase to 65 percent over the next decades. India has set a goal of 100 smart cities to meet the challenge of settling its growing urban migration in decent and humane ways.

Smart cities employ new technologies that integrate urban infrastructure with powerful data analytics, a trend has already hit Chicago, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, cities with significant investment in advanced urban technology. A goal of this movement as Noah Toly argues here on the Thriving Cities blog, “is to make the whole city more responsive, giving us instant access to information we can hold in one hand, turning the city into a device. By harnessing big data, we suppose we may harness the power of urbanization and the city itself—a force with few rivals in history.” Supported by powerful advocates such as Michael Bloomberg and companies such as IBM, smart cities are poised to become a dominant form of urban settlement in the twenty-first century.

Although most cities around the world are incorporating smart technology into the existing urban fabric, India aims to build its smart cities from scratch—thanks to more than $1.18 billion committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The city of Palava is a prime example. Considered Mumbai’s sister city, Palava is the largest privately planned city in India. Through partnering with IBM, Palava will have cutting-edge technology that will help the city government guide and manage its population. Branded as a “city of opportunity,” Palava offers residents a community that boasts lush green spaces and immaculate apartments—according to its website, “Palava isn’t just a new place to live, it’s a new way to live.”

In a country where more than 300 million people live without electricity or access to basic services, smart cities, at least on paper, seem to offer a solution combining sound infrastructure and an improved quality of life. However, critics allege that smart cities will in fact exclude those most in need of what they offer. In a recent Guardian article, journalist Shruti Ravindran highlights the growing concerns about exclusion in India’s new smart cities. In particular, Ravindran points to recent comments made by Indian economist Laveesh Bhandari:

In a monograph for a conference on smart cities in Mumbai in January, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to prevent “millions of poor Indians” from “enjoying the privileges of such great infrastructure”. “This is the natural way of things,” he noted, “for if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.” Bhandari’s bald statements sparked social-media pandemonium, and the economist is now at pains to assert he is far from uncritical of such plans.

In the United States, discourse on urban exclusion usually centers on affordable housing and how factors such as public policy or market forces have often resulted in limited availability. In India, the land sought for smart city construction could lead to the razing of poor districts, the forced removal of the poor, and their subsequent exclusion from new communities. As Ravindran reports, “Smart cities remain a key justification for a controversial land-acquisition ordinance the government is aiming to enact, which does away with mandatory consent and social safeguards for those whose lands are forcibly acquired.” Once built, smart cities could be “governed by powerful corporate entities that could override local laws and governments to ‘keep out’ the poor.” Ravindran notes that “To make sure that no one trespasses on its immaculate privatopia, Palava plans to issue its residents with ‘smart identity cards’, and will watch over them through a system of ‘smart surveillance’.”

Other critics have also warned of this potential for exclusion in smart cities. Well-known smart city critic Adam Greenfield poignantly asks, “What role will the citizen play [in the smart city]? Is the city-dweller best visualised as a smoothly moving pixel, travelling to work, shops and home again, on a colourful 3D graphic display? Or is the citizen rightfully an unpredictable source of obstreperous demands and assertions of rights?”

Like every other form of urban settlement, the smart city is a value-laden human creation enmeshed in cultural norms and political forces. Without hard work and attention to justice, this model could end up excluding those who would most benefit from it, or worse, divert funds from other distressed places. In India’s rush to transform, build, and even engineer entire new cities, critics are right to raise concerns about citizenship and access.

Even in US cities, especially places like Baltimore and Ferguson, we are confronting some of these same issues. In the same way India is wrestling with the social and ethical dynamics of the smart city, we need to equally be self-reflective about the ways we seek to improve our own cities. Every policy and plan for urban improvement need to be accompanied by difficult questions. And none are as pressing as the one confronting India at this moment: “Who is the smart city for?”______________________________________

Just as Bush---then Obama----uses those threats of terrorists to expand HOMELAND SECURITY and PATRIOT ACT-----Trump will do the same to install a super-sized surveillance and spying system in our US cities. This has been happening these several years and it is a continuation of Federal funding from Obama for BIG DATA TECHNOLOGY and sending military equipment to our cities and including them in our community policing.

VideoTrump Acts on ‘Rebuilding’ Military and Vetting RefugeesAt a Pentagon ceremony Friday, President Trump announced executive actions calling for a “great rebuilding” of the U.S. military and a more stringent vetting process for refugees.

By REUTERS. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.In an executive order that he said was part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

“We don’t want them here,” Mr. Trump said of Islamist terrorists during a signing ceremony at the Pentagon. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people.”

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump explained to an interviewer for the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christians in Syria were “horribly treated” and alleged that under previous administrations, “if you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.”

“I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them,” the president said.In fact, the United States accepts tens of thousands of Christian refugees. According to the Pew Research Center, almost as many Christian refugees (37,521) were admitted as Muslim refugees (38,901) in the 2016 fiscal year.

The executive order suspends the entry of refugees into the United States for 120 days and directs officials to determine additional screening ”to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States.”The order also stops the admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely, and bars entry into the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries linked to concerns about terrorism. Those countries are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Additionally, Mr. Trump signed a memorandum on Friday directing what he called “a great rebuilding of the armed services,” saying it would call for budget negotiations to acquire new planes, new ships and new resources for the nation’s military.“Our military strength will be questioned by no one, but neither will our dedication to peace,” Mr. Trump said.

Announcing his “extreme vetting” plan, the president invoked the specter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most of the 19 hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., were from Saudi Arabia. The rest were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. None of those countries are on Mr. Trump’s visa ban list.

Human rights activists roundly condemned Mr. Trump’s actions, describing them as officially sanctioned religious persecution dressed up to look like an effort to make the United States safer.The International Rescue Committee called it “harmful and hasty.” The American Civil Liberties Union described it as a “euphemism for discriminating against Muslims.” Raymond Offensheiser, the president of Oxfam America, said the order would harm families around the world who are threatened by authoritarian governments.

“The refugees impacted by today’s decision are among the world’s most vulnerable people — women, children, and men — who are simply trying to find a safe place to live after fleeing unfathomable violence and loss,” Mr. Offensheiser said.

The president signed the executive order shortly after issuing a statement noting that Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an irony that many of his critics highlighted on Twitter. The statement did not mention Jews, although it cited the “depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

________________________________________The source of many foreign immigrant families stems from BUSH/CHENEY privatized global mercenary military corporations. Bush installed the policy of recruiting Middle-Eastern citizens from Eastern Europe to Near and Far East Asia to be employed as global Wall Street friendly workers. Some work overseas---some many were brought to America and this is a big source of our Muslim immigrant families in the US-----BUSH/CHENEY AND FAR-RIGHT REPUBLICANS drove those policies. As always happens with global Wall Street recruiting people as PLAYERS-----they use and then abuse those citizens---just as will happen to the US global Wall Street 5% to the 1%-----Trump is using these immigrant families now to promote FEAR OF SLEEPER CELLS IN OUR US CITIES-----of course we all need protection from that----send in BLACKWATER AND GLOBAL RAND CORPORATION to track every movement of every citizen in order to do that.

These global labor pool brought to the US will of course be working at the same wage as nations from which they came

'These protections mean little in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the minimum wage is below $1 per hour. And Bahrain, Djibouti and Qatar, for example, all host significant US military forces but have no private-sector minimum wage laws. Moreover, even this bill of rights lacks any clear enforcement mechanism':

This is the new emphasis on global labor pool-----these global 1% and their 5% are really sociopaths. Many US citizens like myself make light of the complicity of overseas terrorist groups from Taliban----to today's ISIS because our US CIA is the one -----like now in the US----who gathers these groups together and then makes them the enemy to fear-----it happens over and over and now inside America we are to be fearful of these very Muslim citizens.

This is a long article but please glance through to think who these immigrants are already in the US---and who they will be as they come to US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones as ONE WORLD GLOBAL SECURITY.

Middle East Research and Information ProjectMigrant Workers and the US Military in the Middle Eastby Darryl Lipublished in MER275

Over the past 15 years, the United States has waged two major land wars in the greater Middle East with hundreds of thousands of ground troops. Shadowing these armies and rivaling them in size has been a labor force of private contractors. The security company once called Blackwater has played an outsize role in the wide-ranging debate about the privatization of war and attendant concerns of corruption, waste and human rights abuses. But this debate has also largely overlooked a crucial fact: While Blackwater was founded and largely staffed by retired US military personnel, the vast majority of the overseas contractor work force is not American.

The so-called privatization revolution has also been an offshoring revolution, with US contractors frequently overseeing an even larger set of foreign subcontractors and workers. Accompanying US forces are both local workers and migrants imported from outside, dubbed “third-country nationals” (TCNs) by the Pentagon.

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of TCNs have worked in support of the US military’s Central Command or CENTCOM in an arc of countries stretching from east Africa to central Asia. Migrant labor has become indispensable to Washington’s war machine, with TCNs often outnumbering American and local contractors and even most allied contingents.

For much of 2010 and 2011, there were more TCNs supporting the US military in Iraq than American and local contractors combined. According to the latest figures, from April 2015, only 39 percent of the over 54,000 contractors in the CENTCOM area of responsibility are American, the rest being roughly equally divided between locals and TCNs. [1]TCN workers are involved in nearly all aspects of base life, including construction, food preparation, entertainment, firefighting and even armed guard duty. They have come from dozens of countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Colombia, Fiji, India, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa and Uganda. In Iraq, TCNs continued to play a major role in supporting US government operations after the formal end of combat operations and will likely do the same in Afghanistan as well in the event of a troop withdrawal. Post-sequestration downsizing of the US military is likely to further strengthen pressures to employ migrant workers.

On US bases abroad, foreign workers are usually paid a fraction of what US citizen contractors and soldiers make; they are not included in the politically sensitive figures of “boots on the ground”; and their deaths and injuries are not officially tallied and rarely register in debates in Washington. [2] TCNs present additional benefits from the Pentagon’s perspective: They are deemed less likely to make common cause with insurgents than local workers and they are readily deportable if non-compliant. Many TCNs are forced to pay recruiting firms exorbitant fees to secure their jobs, leaving them highly indebted and effectively indentured. Not surprisingly, stories of horrific abuse and mistreatment of TCNs have received considerable media coverage in recent years and sparked reform efforts back in Washington.

Military Privatization and the Shift to the Gulf

The US military has a long history of employing local citizens on its overseas military bases. Indeed, the use of private actors in military affairs is historically the norm rather than the exception, with the high point of US centralization of the instruments of force likely taking place in the twentieth century under the Cold War national security state. The few precedents from this period stand out precisely because of this backdrop: After the 1959 revolution, the naval station at Guantánamo Bay largely switched over from a Cuban work force to Filipinos and Jamaicans, who today comprise some 40 percent of the base’s population. [3]The restructuring of the US military at the end of the Cold War helped drive the shift to a migrant labor work force. While the military was affected by the broader push to privatize government functions that had started decades earlier, how and where privatization occurred also mattered. By shifting to a new center of gravity in the Persian Gulf, the US military restructured in ways that meshed with that region’s political economy.

Over the past two decades, the US military has privatized many of its functions, especially those related to logistics and base support services. A major development was the rise of the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), which enabled the military to delegate wide-ranging authority for logistics to private contractors. Instead of hiring private companies to provide specific goods or services, the Pentagon awards LOGCAP contracts to large companies (“prime contractors”) to supply logistical needs for entire missions on an open-ended basis. In order to accomplish specific goals, prime contractors then issue task orders to subcontractors, which may be US or non-US companies.

Contracts have been widely criticized for reimbursement structures that guarantee a fixed percentage of profit, thus encouraging cost inflation, fraud and waste by prime contractors and subcontractors alike. The 2003-2011 war in Iraq was mostly supported through the LOGCAP III contract, managed by KBR. The current LOGCAP IV contract relies on a handful of prime contractors rather than a single one: Operations in Afghanistan are divided between Fluor (northern and eastern regions) and DynCorp (west and south).

The first significant military operation to run on a LOGCAP contract was in Somalia in 1992, where prime contractor Brown and Root (now KBR) arrived less than 24 hours after US forces. Privatization created a stronger incentive to reduce labor costs, providing an economic rationale for relying on non-US workers, although not necessarily for importing migrant workers from third countries. In Kosovo, 90 percent of Brown and Root’s workers were local, making it the biggest employer in the area. [4]

Military privatization, however, is not simply an abstract process that unfolds in the same way across space and time. Crucial to understanding the rise of TCN labor in particular was the post-Cold War military’s shift to a new center of gravity—the Persian Gulf. The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait cemented a major shift in the global US military posture that began after the Iranian revolution, with the deployment of large ground forces to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a counterbalance to both Iraq and Iran. The military that fought the 1991 Gulf war was still largely a Cold War-era one, with relatively limited contractor use. But since then, US bases in the Gulf have been key staging areas for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, engendering a broader shift in labor procurement patterns.

In comparison to the major overseas hubs of the Cold War military in Western Europe and East Asia, the Gulf economies make overwhelming use of foreign migrant labor. The Gulf states’ migrant-driven economies converged with changes in US military logistics. As early as the 1960s, the US Army Corps of Engineers in Saudi Arabia, which built some of the country’s early television network infrastructure as well as many of its major military installations, employed migrants for much of its construction and maintenance work, and only a few locals. [5] In the decades that followed, the use of migrant labor grew even more dramatically. Gulf regimes crushed budding labor movements that emerged around the petrochemical industry and replaced them with large numbers of migrants, all while extending state largesse to pacify and coopt the citizenry. In contrast, contractors at the major US airbase at Incirlik, Turkey, were forced into arbitration with local unions after major strikes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One US military contractor complained of the Turkish workers having a “home-field advantage.” [6] In countries like Kuwait, such issues were no longer a major concern.

By the late 1990s, companies specializing in recruiting migrant labor for construction, logistics and security in the petroleum and related industries were poised to lend their services to the US military. As a result, large US military contractors such as KBR, DynCorp and Fluor can draw from a variety of smaller multinational companies to recruit and transfer workers through the Gulf. One Dubai-based company operating on bases in Afghanistan, Ecolog, was founded by an ethnic Albanian entrepreneur who started out providing services to NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo. One of the leading recruiters of Ugandan security guards for the US military, Dreshak Group, is also based in Dubai but was founded in Pakistan.

The Shape of the Force in Iraq

In order to grasp a sense of the magnitude of the US military’s reliance on foreign contract labor, it is necessary to compare official troop levels—the numbers that are often the fixation of policy debates in Washington—with the size and composition of the contract work force. The following figures are a preliminary attempt at such an analysis in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. [7] Unfortunately, there are no readily available statistics for use of TCNs by the US military worldwide, nor is there publicly available data on the breakdown of nationalities among TCNs. Nevertheless, even this limited data makes apparent the major role of TCN workers, including in armed security work.

The Iraq war presents perhaps the starkest example of the contemporary, multinational, public/private nature of the US military. Figure 1 compiles data on uniformed personnel and contractors in Iraq (unfortunately, this graph does not include recent deployments in the campaign against the self-declared Islamic State or ISIS). [8] This graph illustrates the privatization revolution in action, with total contractor figures rivaling those of uniformed personnel and even exceeding them on average in 2008, 2010 and 2011. In terms of raw numbers, the total contractor work force peaked at 163,591 in December 2007, just shy of the 165,700 uniformed personnel in the country at that time; by 2011, contractors outnumbered service members by a ratio of 1.7 to 1. This trend is consistent with increased reliance on contractors during the withdrawal phase: Contractors allowed the US to maintain operations while reducing the politically sensitive number of uniformed personnel. Indeed, thousands of contractors continued to work for the Pentagon even after the end of US combat operations in December 2011.

This graph also makes clear that the privatization revolution has been an outsourcing revolution as well, with US citizens constituting a minority of the contractor work force. Indeed, from 2009 onward, TCNs were the single largest category; in 2010 and 2011, TCNs outnumbered US and Iraqi contractors combined. They also outnumbered the total British military contingent. Notably, the increased reliance on TCNs has come largely at the expense of Iraqi workers, whose share of the contractor population fell dramatically from 2007 to 2011. The percentage of US workers also increased, albeit more modestly. This confluence strongly suggests that TCNs are especially important to cover the withdrawal of US forces.

While contractors are normally thought of as performing support work for the military, it is striking that many TCNs in Iraq were armed guards. Contractors are officially prohibited from engaging in offensive combat operations, but frequently work in personal security details and also guard bases and convoys. In August 2008, employees of private security companies constituted 7.15 percent of the TCN population in Iraq, a figure that steadily climbed over the next three years. By January 2012, shortly after the withdrawal, 85.6 percent of the nearly 9,500 TCNs were employed in the security sector. Needless to say, these numbers translated into an overwhelming dominance of TCNs in the private security sector of the military work force overall. TCNs comprised between 70 and 88 percent of total private security personnel in the military labor force after 2008, dwarfing the combined numbers of US citizens and Iraqis. The number of armed TCN security contractors appears to have peaked at 11,580—the equivalent of 11 percent of US troops in the country around that time.

Ugandans in particular have been prominent in maintaining perimeter security on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point there were nearly 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq. Indeed, while armed US security contractors such as those fighting for the company then known as Blackwater have attracted the lion’s share of attention, US citizens have never exceeded 11 percent of the total security contractor force in this period. Figure 2 illustrates the breakdown.This pattern appears to hold for non-military US government operations in Iraq as well. According to the latest available data, from fiscal year 2010, TCNs comprised 49 percent of the about 11,000 contractors supporting the State Department in the country—and nearly 66 percent of private security personnel. [9]

The Shape of the Force in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, there are striking similarities and differences in the use of contractors compared to Iraq. Figure 3 compiles data on both service members and contractors deployed to that country. In Afghanistan, the overall extent of contractor reliance has been even greater than in Iraq. Contractors have consistently outnumbered service members in Afghanistan, except at the peak of the troop surge in 2011. In January 2015, the total ratio of contractors to service members reached nearly 4 to 1.The composition of the contractor work force, however, differs significantly from that in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US has relied far more on local workers, who made up the overwhelming majority of the labor pool until 2011. Since then, the US has recalibrated, moving to a rough balance between Afghans, Americans and TCNs. As in Iraq, promises of eventual withdrawal have justified shifting to a more internationalized and “flexible” work force.

The contrast between the US military labor force in Iraq and Afghanistan is even more apparent in the security sector. Unlike in Iraq, security firms in Afghanistan have mostly employed locals. Over time, there has nevertheless been a steady increase in the use of TCN contractors by private security companies, and by 2015 TCNs comprised around half of the Pentagon’s total private security contractor force there.The greater emphasis on TCN use in Iraq compared to Afghanistan can be explained by several factors: First, US forces disbanded the Iraqi army and faced an aggressive insurgency from the first year of the occupation, which strongly discouraged employment of Iraqis. In Afghanistan, US forces had a much lower profile and began their mission with strong local militia partners. Yet as the Afghan mission has expanded along with the scale of the insurgency, US forces have increasingly turned to TCNs. Second, Afghanistan’s relative distance from the Gulf and its land-locked location likely made the importation of TCNs more expensive and difficult than in Iraq. But in both instances, TCNs have played a major role, especially during periods of rapid increase or decrease in the number of troops.

The Shape of the Force in the Gulf

Finally, figures for contractors in the CENTCOM area of responsibility outside Iraq and Afghanistan confirm that extensive use of TCNs is not limited to combat areas. The US military presence in the region includes major bases in Kuwait, Bahrain (home of the US Fifth Fleet) and Qatar (which hosts a forward headquarters for CENTCOM at Al Udeid Air Base). These facilities are crucial staging areas for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the projection of US military power throughout the greater Indian Ocean.

Although there are no publicly available overall figures for service member deployments in the CENTCOM area to enable comparison with contract worker statistics, the raw numbers themselves are impressive, as depicted in Figure 4. TCNs reached a peak of 35,000 in 2009 and outnumbered local and US contractors combined in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014 and into 2015. Locals were the least numerous category; in January 2015, their share dipped to less than 1 percent of the contractor work force. This figure is especially striking in light of the long-standing US military presence in many of these countries, but is consistent given the composition of local labor markets.

Workers’ Rights

The legal status of private military contractors has sparked considerable discussion, albeit with a misleading emphasis on the US citizens: Typically, American war workers do not receive the same political validation that soldiers do, but are paid much higher salaries. Foreign contract workers, however, are treated neither as soldiers to be honored nor as mercenaries who may charge a premium for specialized military skills. They are covered by World War II-era workers’ compensation laws, but numerous practical obstacles prevent them from effectively pursuing claims. The Department of Labor, for example, will not even send mail to Iraq for processing compensation claims. [10]

In recent years, media exposés of the plight of foreign contract workers have highlighted the risks they face. Local workers are tarred with the accusation of collaborating with foreign occupiers and vulnerable to reprisals from local insurgents. As a result, some can apply for special visas to the United States. TCNs, on other hand, are vulnerable by virtue of being in a war zone far from home, often saddled with crushing debts accrued in order to pay recruitment fees to obtain jobs in the first place. This vulnerability has contributed to substandard or unsafe working conditions, housing, summary reductions in pay, and sexual and other forms of harassment.

The US government has enacted some reforms, but their effect appears to be limited and they do not address core labor rights concerns. Most measures have framed the issue as one of “human trafficking,” which revolves around a narrower—and more difficult to prove in court—set of egregious abuses that require government intervention. Instead of empowering workers to organize on their own behalf, trafficking measures tend to posit the US government as savior by rescuing victims and prosecuting wrongdoers. This model, widely assailed within the United States, is even more flawed in overseas war zones where Washington relies on the very corporations that are driving the trafficking. There have been no criminal prosecutions for trafficking on US bases overseas. No contracts have been terminated for abuses against TCNs, although the Pentagon has in a few instances punished corporations for failing to pay local Afghan workers.

Recently enacted federal regulations ban the charging of recruitment fees, [11] but an investigation by Middle East Report editor Anjali Kamat for Al Jazeera found that many TCNs falsely tell the US government that they did not pay such fees in order to avoid losing their jobs. It is unclear how this policy can be implemented given strong incentives to pass responsibility (and plausible deniability) down the contracting chain from the larger corporations to the smaller recruitment agencies.

To the extent the US government has moved to recognize labor rights for foreign contract workers, serious questions remain. The Pentagon has enacted a “bill of rights” of sorts for contractor employees that specifies important basic standards such as receiving agreed-upon wages on time, taking appropriate breaks and possessing written employment contracts in languages workers understand. The rule, however, pegs wages and housing and safety standards to the laws of the host country. [12]These protections mean little in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the minimum wage is below $1 per hour. And Bahrain, Djibouti and Qatar, for example, all host significant US military forces but have no private-sector minimum wage laws. Moreover, even this bill of rights lacks any clear enforcement mechanism: The rules are imposed by the Pentagon on contractors, but provide no clear basis for workers themselves to assert those rights in any court.

________________________________________________

This was immigration policy under Bush and Obama------it was national defense to bring in lots of Muslim citizens from many different nations as translators for NSA data-gathering----it has expanded more and more and our Muslim immigrant citizens were given that same promise of PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP all far-right wing political groups give.WE THE PEOPLE must take a look at who this LAYERING of what does become FACTIONS inside overseas developing nations cause these civil wars. Add to this the far-right MARXIST REBELS-----and VOILA we have the same civil unrest in US cities as has occurred in Foreign Economic Zone nations for several decades----THAT IS WHAT CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA---NOW TRUMP have been building regarding immigration policy these few decades because they are all far-right wing global Wall Street.

Staff Sgt. Alejandro Campos, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, became a citizen after joining the Army.Credit Rob Bennett for The New York Times Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.

“The American Army finds itself in a lot of different countries where cultural awareness is critical,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the Army, which is leading the pilot program. “There will be some very talented folks in this group.”

The program will begin small — limited to 1,000 enlistees nationwide in its first year, most for the Army and some for other branches. If the pilot program succeeds as Pentagon officials anticipate, it will expand for all branches of the military. For the Army, it could eventually provide as many as 14,000 volunteers a year, or about one in six recruits.

About 8,000 permanent immigrants with green cards join the armed forces annually, the Pentagon reports, and about 29,000 foreign-born people currently serving are not American citizens.

Although the Pentagon has had wartime authority to recruit immigrants since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, military officials have moved cautiously to lay the legal groundwork for the temporary immigrant program to avoid controversy within the ranks and among veterans over the prospect of large numbers of immigrants in the armed forces.A preliminary Pentagon announcement of the program last year drew a stream of angry comments from officers and veterans on Military.com, a Web site they frequent.

Marty Justis, executive director of the national headquarters of the American Legion, the veterans’ organization, said that while the group opposes “any great influx of immigrants” to the United States, it would not object to recruiting temporary immigrants as long as they passed tough background checks. But he said the immigrants’ allegiance to the United States “must take precedence over and above any ties they may have with their native country.”

The military does not allow illegal immigrants to enlist, and that policy would not change, officers said. Recruiting officials pointed out that volunteers with temporary visas would have already passed a security screening and would have shown that they had no criminal record.“The Army will gain in its strength in human capital,” General Freakley said, “and the immigrants will gain their citizenship and get on a ramp to the American dream.”

In recent years, as American forces faced combat in two wars and recruiters struggled to meet their goals for the all-volunteer military, thousands of legal immigrants with temporary visas who tried to enlist were turned away because they lacked permanent green cards, recruiting officers said.

Recruiters’ work became easier in the last few months as unemployment soared and more Americans sought to join the military. But the Pentagon, facing a new deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, still has difficulties in attracting doctors, specialized nurses and language experts.

Several types of temporary work visas require college or advanced degrees or professional expertise, and immigrants who are working as doctors and nurses in the United States have already been certified by American medical boards.

Military figures show that only 82 percent of about 80,000 Army recruits last year had high school diplomas. According to new figures, the Army provided waivers to 18 percent of active-duty recruits in the final four months of last year, allowing them to enlist despite medical conditions or criminal records.

Military officials want to attract immigrants who have native knowledge of languages and cultures that the Pentagon considers strategically vital. The program will also be open to students and refugees.

The Army’s one-year pilot program will begin in New York City to recruit about 550 temporary immigrants who speak one or more of 35 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo (a tongue spoken in Nigeria), Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashto, Russian and Tamil. Spanish speakers are not eligible. The Army’s program will also include about 300 medical professionals to be recruited nationwide. Recruiting will start after Department of Homeland Security officials update an immigration rule in coming days.Pentagon officials expect that the lure of accelerated citizenship will be powerful. Under a statute invoked in 2002 by the Bush administration, immigrants who serve in the military can apply to become citizens on the first day of active service, and they can take the oath in as little as six months.

For foreigners who come to work or study in the United States on temporary visas, the path to citizenship is uncertain and at best agonizingly long, often lasting more than a decade. The military also waives naturalization fees, which are at least $675.To enlist, temporary immigrants will have to prove that they have lived in the United States for two years and have not been out of the country for longer than 90 days during that time. They will have to pass an English test.Language experts will have to serve four years of active duty, and health care professionals will serve three years of active duty or six years in the Reserves. If the immigrants do not complete their service honorably, they could lose their citizenship.Commenters who vented their suspicions of the program on Military.com said it could be used by terrorists to penetrate the armed forces.At a street corner recruiting station in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, Staff Sgt. Alejandro Campos of the Army said he had already fielded calls from temporary immigrants who heard rumors about the program.“We’re going to give people the opportunity to be part of the United States who are dying to be part of this country and they weren’t able to before now,” said Sergeant Campos, who was born in the Dominican Republic and became a United States citizen after he joined the Army.

Sergeant Campos said he saw how useful it was to have soldiers who were native Arabic speakers during two tours in Iraq.“The first time around we didn’t have soldier translators,” he said. “But now that we have soldiers as translators, we are able to trust more, we are able to accomplish the mission with more accuracy.”_________________________________________

Baby boomers like me are aging out of what will be the worst of these next few decades of MOVING FORWARD so I am shouting to our 99% of young adults and families needing to educate their children and grandchildren. Take time to look at how global Wall Street has installed itself in developing nations around the world especially these several decades of global empire-building---it will look the same as the old world MERCHANTS OF VENICE. When looking try to find articles written pre-CLINTON when our journalism was holding power accountable---not owned by power.All immigration policy through CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA along with soaring GLOBAL NGOs in our US cities have been building to creating these same conditions of instability in US as occurred in Latin America and Asia----it will be those same WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' organizations with those same 5% to the 1% now playing the MARXIST REBEL....the far-right anti-immigrant citizen---the separatist citizen groups----all while global Wall Street installs these same global policing and security structures seen for decades in developing nations under 'transition'.PLEASE HAVE OUR YOUNG ADULTS AWARE OF WHO THOSE 5% TO THE 1% FAKE REVOLUTIONARIES ARE-----we need all 99% protesting and marching---forcing those global Wall Street players out----and all of this can be done with NO FACTIONING OR VIOLENCE.

All of this occurred in US because WE THE PEOPLE allowed our elections to be rigged back in 1990s and 2000 killing the left and giving us only a right wing political hold----we didn't protest then----we did not protest Democratic left primary fraud----we only protested because a far-right wing global Wall Street Hillary lost to a far-right wing global Wall Street Trump.

This is Part 3 of the series, “When Empire Hits Home.”Part 1: War, Racism and the Empire of PovertyPart 2: Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis: The Impoverishment of the Middle Class

As nations of the world are thrown into a debt crisis, the likes of which have never been seen before, harsh fiscal ‘austerity’ measures will be undertaken in a flawed attempt to service the debts. The result will be the elimination of the middle class. When the middle class is absorbed into the labour class – the lower class – and lose their social, political, and economic foundations, they will riot, rebel, and revolt.

Ratings Agency Predicts Civil Unrest

Moody’s is a major ratings agency, which performs financial research and analysis on governments and commercial entities and ranks the credit-worthiness of borrowers. On March 15, Moody’s warned that the US, the UK, Germany, France, and Spain “are all at risk of soaring debt costs and will have to implement austerity plans that threaten ‘social cohesion’.” Further, Moody’s warned that such ‘austerity’ measures increase the potential for ‘social unrest’:“Growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation. Preserving debt affordability at levels consistent with AAA ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion,” said Pierre Cailleteau, the chief author.

“We are not talking about revolution, but the severity of the crisis will force governments to make painful choices that expose weaknesses in society,” he said.[1]In other words, due to the massive debt levels of western nations taken on to save the banks from the crisis they caused, the people must now pay through a reduction of their standards of living. Naturally, social unrest would follow.This has not been the first or only warning of “social unrest” in the west, and it certainly won’t be the last.

The Economic Crisis and Civil Unrest

At the onset of the economic crisis, these warnings were numerous. While many will claim that since we have moved on since the fall of 2008, these warnings are no longer valid. However, considering that the western world is on the verge of a far greater economic crisis that will spread over the next few years, from Greece to America, a great global debt depression, these warnings should be reviewed with an eye on the near future.

In December of 2008, in the midst of the worst period of the crisis of 2008, the IMF issued a warning to government’s of the west to “step up action to stem the global economic crisis or risk delaying a recovery and sparking violent unrest on the streets.”[2] However, governments did not stem or stop the economic crisis, they simply delayed the eventual and inevitable crisis to come, the debt crisis. In fact, the actions governments took to “stem” the economic crisis, or delay it, more accurately, have, in actuality, exacerbated the compound effects that the crisis will ultimately have. In short, bailing out the banks has created a condition in which an inevitable debt crisis will become far greater in scope and devastation than had they simply allowed the banks to fail.

Even the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the most prestigious financial institution in the world – the central bank to the world’s central banks – has warned that the bailouts have put the global economy in potentially far greater peril. The BIS warned that, “The scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets.”[3]The head of the IMF warned that, “violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite.”[4] However, he is disingenuous in his statements, as he and the institution he represents are key players in that “small elite” that benefit from the global financial system; this is the very system he serves.

In late December of 2008, “A U.S. Army War College report warn[ed] an economic crisis in the United States could lead to massive civil unrest and the need to call on the military to restore order.” The report stated:Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities … to defend basic domestic order and human security.[5]Further revealed in the news release was the information that, “Pentagon officials said as many as 20,000 Soldiers under the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) will be trained within the next three years to work with civilian law enforcement in homeland security.”[6]

Europe in Social Crisis

In January of 2009, it was reported that Eastern Europe was expected to experience a “dangerous popular backlash on the streets” over the spring in response to the economic crisis:

Hit increasingly hard by the financial crisis, countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states face deep political destabilisation and social strife, as well as an increase in racial tension.Last week protesters were tear-gassed as they threw rocks at police outside parliament in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, in a protest against an austerity package including tax rises and benefit cuts.[7]

In January of 2009, Latvia experienced the largest protests since the mass rallies against Soviet rule in the late 1980s, with the protests eventually turning into riots. Similar “outbursts of civil unrest” spread across the “periphery of Europe.”[8]

This should be taken as a much larger warning, as the nations of Eastern Europe are forced into fiscal ‘austerity’ measures before they spread through the western world. Just as throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, countries of the ‘global south’, which signed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) with the IMF and World Bank, were forced to undertake neoliberal reforms and harsh fiscal austerity measures. The people of these nations rioted and rebelled, in what was cynically referred to as “IMF riots”. What our nations have done abroad, in the name of ‘aid’ but in the intent of empire, is now coming home. The west will undergo its very own “IMF riots”.

The fears of civil unrest, however, were not confined simply to the periphery of Europe. In January of 2009, a massive French strike was taking place, as “teachers, television employees, postal workers, students and masses of other public-sector workers” were expressing discontent with the handling of the economic crisis; as “A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading.”[9]

By late January, France was “paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battleﬁeld.” Yet, the ‘credit crunch’ had hit harder in Eastern Europe and the civil unrest was greater, as these countries had abandoned Communism some twenty years prior only to be crushed under the “free market” of Capitalism, leading many to feel betrayed: “Europe’s time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.”[10]

Olivier Besancenot, the leader of France’s extreme left “is hoping the strike will be the first step towards another French revolution as the recession bites and protests multiply across Europe’s second largest economy.” He told the Financial Times that, “We want the established powers to be blown apart,” and that, “We are going to reinvent and re-establish the anticapitalist project.”[11]

In January of 2009, Iceland’s government collapsed due to the pressures from the economic crisis, and amidst a storm of Icelanders protesting in anger against the political class. As the Times reported, “it is a sign of things to come: a new age of rebellion.”

An economist at the London School of Economics warned that we could expect large-scale civil unrest beginning in March to May of 2009:

It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international.[12]

In February of 2009, the Guardian reported that police in Britain were preparing for a “summer of rage” as “victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions.” Police officials warned “that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.”[13]In March, it was reported that “top secret contingency plans” had been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a possible “summer of discontent,” which “has led to the ­extraordinary step of the Army being put on ­standby.” The report revealed that, “What worries emergency planners most is that the middle classes, now struggling to cope with unemployment and repossessions, may take to the streets with the disenfranchised.”[14]

As the G20 met in London in early April 2009, mass protests took place, resulting in violence, “with a band of demonstrators close to the Bank of England storming a Royal Bank of Scotland branch, and baton-wielding police charging a sit-down protest by students.” While the majority of protests were peaceful, “some bloody skirmishes broke out as police tried to keep thousands of people in containment pens surrounding the Bank of England.”[15] Protests further broke out into riots as a Royal Bank of Scotland office was looted.[16] The following day, a man collapsed and died in central London during the protests shortly after having been assaulted by riot police.[17]On May 1, 2009, major protests and riots broke out in Germany, Greece, Turkey, France and Austria, fuelled by economic tensions:Police in Berlin arrested 57 people while around 50 officers were hurt as young demonstrators threw bottles and rocks and set fire to cars and rubbish bins. There were also clashes in Hamburg, where anti-capitalist protesters attacked a bank.

In Turkey, masked protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at police, smashing banks and supermarket windows in its biggest city, Istanbul. Security forces fired tear gas and water cannon at hundreds of rioters and more than a hundred were arrested with dozens more hurt. There were also scattered skirmishes with police in the capital, Ankara, where 150,000 people marched.[18]There were further protests and riots that broke out in Russia, Italy, Spain, and some politicians were even discussing the threat of revolution.[19]As a debt crisis began spreading throughout Europe in Greece, Portugal, and Spain, social unrest followed suit. Riots and protests increasingly took place in Greece, showing signs of things to come to all other western nations, which will sooner or later have to face the harsh reality of their odious debts.[20]

Is Civil Unrest Coming to America?

In February of 2009, Obama’s intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the economic crisis has become the greatest threat to U.S. national security:I’d like to begin with the global economic crisis, because it already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries … Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period… And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community.[21]What this means, is that economic crises (“if they are prolonged for a one or two year period”) pose a major threat to the established powers – the governing and economic powers – in the form of social unrest and rebellion (“regime-threatening instability”). The colonial possessions – Africa, South America, and Asia – will experience the worst of the economic conditions, which “can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have.” This can then come back to the western nations and imperial powers themselves, as the riots and rebellion will spread home, but also as they may lose control of their colonial possessions – eliminating western elites from a position of power internationally, and acquiescence domestically: The rebellion and discontent in the ‘Third World’ “can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community.”

In the same month, the highest-ranking general in the United States, “Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ranks the financial crisis as a higher priority and greater risk to security than current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He explained, “It’s a global crisis. And as that impacts security issues, or feeds greater instability, I think it will impact on our national security in ways that we quite haven’t figured out yet.”[22] Rest assured, they’ve figured it out, but they don’t want to tell you.Again, in the same month, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that, “The global economic crisis could trigger political unrest equal to that seen during the 1930s.” He elaborated, “The crisis today is spreading even faster (than the Great Depression) and affects more countries at the same time.”[23]

In February of 2009, renowned economic historian and Harvard professor, Niall Ferguson, predicted a “prolonged financial hardship, even civil war, before the ‘Great Recession’ ends,” and that, “The global crisis is far from over, [it] has only just begun, and Canada is no exception,” he said while at a speaking event in Canada. He explained, “Policy makers and forecasters who see a recovery next year are probably lying to boost public confidence,” while, “the crisis will eventually provoke political conflict.” He further explained:There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable.[24]

Even in May of 2009, the head of the World Bank warned that, “the global economic crisis could lead to serious social upheaval,” as “there is a risk of a serious human and social crisis with very serious political implications.”[25]

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission and a key architect of ‘globalization’ warned in February of 2009 that, “There’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!”[26]

In early May 2009, the New York Times reported on the results of a major poll, suggesting, “A solid majority of people in the major Western democracies expect a rise in political extremism in their countries as a result of the economic crisis.” Of those surveyed, 53% in Italy and the United States said they expected extremism is “certain to happen” or “probable” in the next three years. That percentage increases to 65% in Britain and Germany, and is at 60% in France and Spain.[27]Over the summer of 2009, the major nations of the west and their corporate media machines promoted and propagandized the notion of an ‘economic recovery’, allowing dissent to quell, spending to increase, stock market speculation to accelerate, and people’s fears and concerns to subside. It was a massive organized propaganda effort, and it had major successes for a while. However, in the New Year, this illusion is largely being derided for what it is, a fantasy. With the slow but steady erosion of this economic illusion, fears of riots, rebellion and revolution return.

When we can’t feed our families what do you tell us? Thou shalt not steal? When survival is the first law of nature? What are you going to do when black people and poor people erupt in the streets of America? It’s coming! Will you use the federal troops, Mr. President, against the poor?[28]A March 8 article in the Wall Street Journal speculated about the discontent among the American people in regards to the economy, suggesting that it is “likely” that the economy has “bottomed” and that it will simply “trudge along” until November.

However, the author suggested that given all the growing discontent in a variety of areas, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some civil unrest:

Now, contrary to what you may read in the New York Times or the Huffington Post, the ugliness could come from anywhere – the Left, the Center or the Right. Almost everyone in America thinks they’ve been betrayed.[29]

Clearly, the possibility and inevitability of riots in the United States, and in fact in many western nations becomes increasingly apparent. The middle classes will likely become the most angered and mobilized populace, having their social foundations pulled out from under them, and with that, they are overcome with a ‘failure of expectations’ for their political and economic clout. With no social foundations on which to stand, a class cannot reach high in the political and economic ladder, nationally or internationally.As documented in Part 2 of this series, the middle class, for the past few decades, has been a class living on debt, consuming on debt, surviving on debt and existing only in theory. As nations collapse into a global debt crisis, the middle classes and the college students will be plunged into a world which they have seldom known: poverty. As documented in Part 1 of this series, the global social systems of poverty, race and war are inextricably interrelated and dependent on one another. As the middle class is absorbed into the global poverty class – the labour class – our nations in the west vastly expand their hegemony over the world’s resources and key strategic points, rapidly accelerating military involvement in every region of the world. As war expands, poverty grows, and racial issues are exacerbated; thus, the government asserts a totalitarian system of control.

Will the Middle Class Become Revolutionary?

In 2007, a British Defence Ministry report was released assessing global trends in the world over the next 30 years. The report stated assuredly that, “During the next 30 years, every aspect of human life will change at an unprecedented rate, throwing up new features, challenges and opportunities.”[30] In regards to ‘globalization,’ the report states:

A key feature of globalization will be the continuing internationalization of markets for goods, services and labour, which will integrate geographically dispersed sets of customers and suppliers. This will be an engine for accelerating economic growth, but will also be a source of risk, as local markets become increasingly exposed to destabilizing fluctuations in the wider global economy… Also, there will continue to be winners and losers in a global economy led by market forces, especially so in the field of labour, which will be subject to particularly ruthless laws of supply and demand.[31]

Another major focus of the report is in the area of “Global Inequality,” of which the report states, over the next 30 years:

[T]he gap between rich and poor will probably increase and absolute poverty will remain a global challenge… Disparities in wealth and advantage will therefore become more obvious, with their associated grievances and resentments, even among the growing numbers of people who are likely to be materially more prosperous than their parents and grandparents. Absolute poverty and comparative disadvantage will fuel perceptions of injustice among those whose expectations are not met, increasing tension and instability, both within and between societies and resulting in expressions of violence such as disorder, criminality, terrorism and insurgency. They may also lead to the resurgence of not only anti-capitalist ideologies, possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to populism and the revival of Marxism.[32]

The report states quite emphatically that there is a great potential for a revolution coming from the middle class:The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.[33]

Is Revolution the Right Way Forward?

As the world has already experienced the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, the greatest social transformation in world history is soon to follow. The middle classes of the west, long the foundations upon which the consumer capitalist system was based, are about to be radically reorganized and integrated into the global labour class. As this process commences and accelerates, the middle classes will begin to protest, riot, rebel, and possibly revolt.

We must ask ourselves: Is this the right way forward?

History is nothing but an example that when revolution takes place, it can quickly and effectively be hijacked by militant and extremist elements, often resulting in a situation worse than that prior to the revolution. Often, these elements themselves are co-opted by the ruling elite, ensuring that whatever regime rises in the ashes of the old, no matter how militant or radical, it will continue to serve and expand the entrenched interests of elites. This is the worst-case scenario of revolution, and with history as a guide, it is also a common occurrence. To understand the nature of co-opted revolutions and entrenched elites, one need only look at the revolutions in France and Russia.[34]

While the righteous indignation and anger of the western middle class population, and in fact, the global population as a whole, is entirely justified, there is an extreme danger in the possibilities of how such a revolutionary class may act. It is imperative to not take violent action, as it would merely be playing directly into the hands of states and global institutions that have been preparing for this eventuality for some time. Nations are becoming ‘Homeland Security States’, setting up surveillance societies, increasing the role of the military in domestic issues and policing, expanding the police state apparatus and militarizing society in general. Democracy is in decline; it is a dying idea. Nation states are increasingly tossing aside even the remaining vestiges of a democratic façade and preparing for a new totalitarianism to arise, in conjunction with the rise of a ‘new capitalism’.

Violent action and riots by the people of these nations will only result in a harsh and brutal closing of society, as the state clamps down on the people and installs an oppressive form of governance. This is a trend and process of which the people should not help speed along. Violent acts will result in violent oppression. While peaceful opposition may itself be oppressed and even violently repressed by the state apparatus, the notion of a clamp down on peaceful protesters is likely to increase dissatisfaction with the ruling powers, increase support for the protesters, and may ultimately speed up the process of a truly new change in governance. It’s difficult to demonize peaceful action.

While people will surely be in the streets, seeking to expand their social, political, and economic rights, we must undertake as a global society, a rapid and extensive expansion of our mental and intellectual rights and responsibilities. We cannot take to the streets without taking on the challenges of our minds. This cannot alone be a physical change in governance that people seek – not simply a political revolution – this must be coupled and driven by an intellectual revolution. What is required is a new Enlightenment, a new Renaissance. While the Enlightenment and Renaissance were western movements of thinking and social change, the new global Enlightenment must be a truly transnational and worldwide revolution in thinking.Western Civilization has failed. It will continue to insist upon its own dominance, but it is a failure in regards to addressing the interests of all human civilization. Elites like to think that they are in absolute control and are all-powerful; this is not the case. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Take, for example, the integration of North America into a regional bloc like that of the European Union, an entirely elite-driven project of which the people largely know little or nothing about. Elites seek to force the people of this region to increasingly identify themselves as ‘North American’, just as elites in Europe increasingly push for a ‘European’ identity as opposed to a national identity. While the intended purpose of this social reorganization is to more easily control people, it has the effect of uniting some of these people in opposition to these elite-driven projects. Thus, those they seek to unite in order to control, are then united in opposition to their very control.

As the ‘globalization project’ of constructing a ‘new world order’ expands, built upon the concepts of global governance, elites will inadvertently unite the people of the world in opposition to their power-project. This is the intellectual well that must be tapped as soon as possible. Ideas for a truly new world, a true human ‘civilization’ – a “Humane Civilization” – must be constructed from ideas originating in all regions of the world, from all peoples, of all religions, races, ethnicities, social groups and standings. If we are to make human civilization work, it must work for all of humanity.

This will require a global “revolution in thinking”, which must precede any direct political action. The global social, political, and economic system must be deconstructed and built anew. The people of the world do not want war, it is the leaders – the powerful – who decide to go to war, and they are never the ones to fight them. War is a crime against humanity, a crime of poverty, of discrimination, of hate. The social, political and economic foundations of war must be dismantled. Socially constructed divides between people – such as race and ethnicity – must be dismantled and done away with. All people must be treated as people; racial and gender inequality is a crime against humanity itself.

Poverty is the greatest crime against humanity the world has ever known. Any society that permits such gross inequalities and absolute poverty, which calls itself ‘civilized’, is only an aberration of the word, itself.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.[35]

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I would be asking this ----who are these Muslims being exported or harassed with airport restrictions----it was Bush/Cheney who installed these policies bringing Muslim's to US for employment with military and state department and Obama did as well. These jobs came with a pathway to citizenship-----the far-right global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA now Trump never honor these promises---something always changes this pathway. Wonder if Trump is ending these programs as Republicans have been defunding them and that is what we are seeing on all media coverage?

'Last summer, a handful of Republican lawmakers disrupted what has become a somewhat regular allocation of visas to the program, questioning the cost of the 4,000 additional visas requested by the Obama administration this year and, in one case, tying them up procedurally to force consideration of unrelated legislation'.

Zar Mohammad Stanikzai, an Afghan who worked as an interpreter and whose application for a United States visa was rejected this year.Credit Andrew Quilty for The New York Times WASHINGTON — After a protracted political debate, Congress passed a measure on Thursday that would offer sanctuary to a fraction of the Afghan interpreters and translators who have risked their lives to help the military.The measure, included in an annual military policy bill, renews the nearly nine-year-old visa program for Afghans facing serious threats because they assisted American troops. The Senate passed the broader, $619 billion legislation, 92 to 7, sending it to President Obama for his signature.

But the renewal added just 1,500 extra visas, not nearly enough to cover the approximately 13,000 pending applications, and it imposes more eligibility restrictions on an already complicated process.The fix may not be enough to save the program — and the Afghans who are anxiously hoping it will be their deliverance from the Taliban and other threats, said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire.“I think it’s clear that we will run out of those visas,” she said.

Last summer, a handful of Republican lawmakers disrupted what has become a somewhat regular allocation of visas to the program, questioning the cost of the 4,000 additional visas requested by the Obama administration this year and, in one case, tying them up procedurally to force consideration of unrelated legislation.Now, the fate of the visa program will hinge on a government led by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has yet to say how he will handle an issue that is championed by the military but would also bring more Muslim immigrants to the United States.

There is some cautious optimism that the more members of the military there are among Mr. Trump’s advisers, the more likely he is to support the program. Gen. David H. Petraeus, a former commander of American forces in Afghanistan who is reportedly under consideration for secretary of state, is among those who have argued the United States has made a commitment to protect those Afghans — one that would hurt the country’s credibility overseas if abandoned.

“By failing to allocate sufficient visas to provide our Afghan allies with a path to safety, we fail to keep the faith with them — and with our troops and diplomats who rely on them to succeed in their mission,” Betsy Fisher, the policy director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a statement last week.

It was a relatively subdued conclusion for the broader bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, which set off bitter disputes this year about workplace protections for gay men and lesbians employed by federal contractors, and about efforts to restrict the Confederate flag. It also prompted a debate about whether women should be required to register for the draft, a measure that was ultimately cut from the final bill.Republicans trumpeted in particular the fact that the bill would offer troops their largest pay increase since 2010, a raise of 2.1 percent, as well as an overhaul of the troubled health care system for veterans. The legislation will also make changes to the acquisitions office at the Pentagon, splitting it into two to separate its more cutting-edge research work from daily tasks like managing contracts.

The bill will lay the framework for the Pentagon that Mr. Trump will soon inherit, leaving it up to the next Congress to set aside the money to fund many of those policies. Mr. Trump said during his campaign that he would toss out the military budget caps known as sequestration, opening the door to more spending. Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said on Tuesday that lawmakers would quickly take up spending bills early next year.

Democrats expressed some reservations about the legislation, which totaled more than $3 billion above Mr. Obama’s budget request. While officials have not yet said whether Mr. Obama will sign it, Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, recently told reporters there were parts of the legislation that were “encouraging.”